By Name · Week 1 · Tuesday · SCREENS
It is ten minutes to midnight. He is forty-four, his wife went to bed an hour ago, and he has spent that hour in the comments under a news article, going back and forth with a stranger whose profile picture is a cartoon.
The stranger has been mocking his faith. Not arguing with it. Mocking it. And the stranger is wrong, in ways that are checkable, and he has checked them.
His next reply is already typed. It is short, accurate, and a little bit cutting. It is the kind of reply that ends a thread. A friend from college has liked every comment he has made tonight and is clearly waiting for this one.
Being right was not his problem
Somewhere in that hour he noticed what he had been calling this person in his own head. Not out loud. Nothing he would ever type. But he had been calling him that the whole time, and he heard it.
Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?Matthew 7:3 (BSB)
That verse does not say the speck is not there. It says you will not see it clearly while you are carrying a beam. He was right about the speck. And he had a beam the size of a fence post, and it was contempt.
The verse just a few lines later is the one people usually reach for in a comment section.
Do not give dogs what is holy; do not throw your pearls before swine. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.Matthew 7:6 (BSB)
Read alone, it sounds like permission to decide the other guy is a pig. Read where Jesus put it, after the beam, it sounds more like a warning to the one holding the pearls. Some conversations are not going to be won. Some of them will turn and tear you up. And you do not owe the crowd your answer just because the crowd is watching.
He let the stranger have the last word
He deleted the reply. He did not save it. He closed the laptop.
Then, because it was the only thing left to do, he prayed for the stranger. By his username. Which felt ridiculous, and he did it anyway.
I do not think that prayer was him being the bigger man. I think it was him admitting he could not fix the stranger, could not win the stranger, and was not the one in charge of what the stranger believed. God did not need him to win that thread.
What it cost: the stranger got the last word, and it was a good one. It got more likes than anything he had posted all night.
In the morning his college friend texted him: you just let him have that?
He wrote back: yeah.
You can be right about the speck and still have a beam.
That is not a satisfying ending. It was not supposed to be.
Leave a Reply